Three Kings

Three Kings is a film where a bunch of interesting
and involving ideas about the U.S.-Iraq conflict in 1991 are strung
together in a fairly haphazard manner. The incongruous combination of
the harsh realities of war, governmental power plays, and Hollywood
action-humour make it surprisingly effective.

There is a plot to envelope the social commentary: The Gulf War
has ended. Sergeant Major Archie Gates (George Clooney), Sergeant Troy
Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube), and Private Conrad Vig
(Spike Jonze) are four soldiers in search of gold bullion stolen from
Kuwait by Iraq (of course, their intention isn't to return it to
Kuwait). As they proceed in their search, they encounter dishonesty,
greed, corruption, oppression, and hypocrisy. The primary victims are
the Iraqi civilians and so the soldiers change their modus operandi to
start helping these people.

Films such as this one border too much on sentimentality, but in
my view, Three Kings is a far more effective anti-war
film than a film like Saving
Private Ryan. The movie touches upon several disparate
issues: the notion of conducting a propaganda war through the use of
media (each side readily accepts the presence of TV cameras); the real
reason the U.S. interfered with respect to Kuwait (which probably has
just a bad dictatorship as Iraq) but doesn't do anything about Tibet
and East Timor (oil); the reason Iraq was able to invade Kuwait in the
first place (thanks to American arms and training); the behaviour of
governments to serve their own interest as part of the politics of war
(Bush promised the Iraqi resistance support, but withdrew it when the
cease fire was declared); the behaviour of governments to do anything
to cement their power base; and even comments about a culture that
persuades a black person to appear more white (Michael Jackson).

All of these aren't just stated to the audience, but it is really
forced down their throat by scenes that fly in-your-face and make it
hard to ignore. For example, oil is forced down the gullet of an
American prisoner to make him comprehend the real reason for the Gulf
War. These messages are brought even more to the forefront with
surreal filming (including a scene with a desert where the soldiers
play American football) and distinctive characters. The acting is
fairly decent, but it is the kinetic nature of the film that
ultimately makes it successful.

Consumer capitalism or a dictatorship? The odds are still in the
favour of the former, but the film tries the show the darker side of
both. Bold in its ideas, Three Kings is a film that one
will probably love or hate. Ultimately, it is a tale about the
brutality humans inflict upon each other to satisfy their material
greed. There is humour here, but between the times we're made to
laugh, there is a lot of depth to this material. As a pacifist,
Three Kings illustrates the virtues of non-violence,
because if you use violence as a solution to a problem, even as a last
resort, what logical grounds are there to not follow the same view in
the future? Violence begets violence.